Boll Weevil Democrats

The Boll Weevil Democrats is a faction of the US Democratic Party that consists of conservative Southern Democrats. The faction emerged under President Harry Truman; many southern Democratic politicians supported his economic policies, but they were opposed to desegregation and the African-American Civil Rights movement. In 1948, 1960, and 1968, Boll Weevils broke off from the main party to run independent presidential campaigns, namely under Strom Thurmond, Harry F. Byrd, and George Wallace, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the desegregation of the American South by 1968 led to many conservative southerners being won over by the increasingly conservative US Republican Party. Men such as Larry McDonald supported Ronald Reagan's administration, his tax cuts, increases in military spending, and deregulation, and most Boll Weevils retired or defected to the Republicans. During the 1990s, the Boll Weevils reorganized themselves as the "Blue Dog Democrats".